and first of all, i just want to thank jeff and sandy and tristan and skyelar for letting us use their backyard. so please give them a big round of applause. and since we are here, i should just say, go bulldogs. i know how to work a crowd. i want to make sure that everybody also acknowledges your outstanding governor, chet culver, who's here. the mayor of des moines, frank cownie, who is here. and state representative janet petersen is here. all of whom are doing great work, and i had a chance to work with and get to know when i spent a few months here in iowa a couple years ago. it is wonderful to be back, and i thank all of you for coming. i am not going to give a long speech on the front end here. what i really want to do is hear from you. so what i'm going to do is just speak a little bit at the front end about where i think the country is at, how we move forward. it's relevant because there is an election coming up, although i'm going to try to avoid making just a straight political speech here. when i started running for president back in 2008 -- 2007, 2008 -- the reason i was w